The Edge of the World

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Hagrid W Mar 23, 2019 Shot on location at Foula, one of the tiny Shetland Islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, this may be director Michael Powellâ(TM)s first masterpiece. Some suggest that it is very different from the highly stylized Technicolor pictures that Powell later made with his key collaborator Emeric Pressburger (e.g., The Red Shoes, 1948; Black Narcissus, 1947) â" but in truth this seems not too far distant from some of their masterpieces (such as I Know Where Iâ(TM)m Going, 1945, which takes place in the same general locale). There is an almost surreal pictorial beauty here with land and seascape, flora, and fauna sharing almost equal billing with the human characters of the story (Terence Malick must have taken inspiration here). Foula is impressive, with its steep cliffs topped by green pastures and rocky coast lashed by the sea but it is a stand-in for St. Kilda, an island in the Hebrides which was vacated by its residents after they decided that their way of life could not be sustained in the modern world. And this is the plot that Powell pursues â" he examines a community that is grappling with whether it can sustain itself as its young people choose to leave for the mainland and better jobs and less harsh conditions. A young Niall MacGinnis (who I know best from Curse of the Demon, 1957) plays Andrew Gray who wishes to remain on the island with his father (the great Finlay Currie) and accepts a challenge from Robbie Manson (Eric Berry) who wishes to leave â" the challenge is to climb the steepest cliff barehanded and the winner will decide the fate of the island. Itâ(TM)s a nail-biting sequence. Although Gray wins, his love for Mansonâ(TM)s sister Ruth (Belle Chrystall) drives him to leave the island (and his yet-unknown unborn son). Soon the whole community plans to leave, but the Manson patriarch (John Laurie) stubbornly resists leaving without first gathering some rare eggs. The plot itself is almost beside the point here because Powellâ(TM)s sense of the environment, here at the nearly literal edge of the world (or at least the UK), is spectacularly mystical. Surely, this would be a destination for reflection on beauty and on human insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Powellâ(TM)s focus is instead on the loss of culture and community with modernity, a subtle theme that can be traced through his work. See more

Leia S Mar 14, 2017 Some of the acting is very stiff and clunky, but the photography and stoic dignity of the inhabitants of the fictional doomed Scottish island at the centre of Michael Powell's short feature more than compensate. As in so many of his films characters are always falling to their deaths from a great height. One of them here is John Laurie, in a marvellous performance that proves what a great actor he was thirty years before Dad's Army claimed him. Strangely moving. See more

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The Edge of the World

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